i'm just asking for forgiveness
by Emmy Smokes
Summary: Recently orphaned Jon Snow and eternal martyr Sansa Stark find their way home. Rated M for the kissing cousins and the sex stuff.


**asking for grace and forgiveness**

_**by Emmy Smokes**_

* * *

Notes- I'm sticking by the books regarding these guys' ages. That means Robb and Jon are the same age, Sansa is three years their junior, Arya is two years younger than Sansa, and Rickon is a three year old bc he's Rickon and nobody cares about Rickon I'm sorry.

Everyone's alive and happy and well, except for Jon's parents.

So enjoy your happy Starks with your incest on the side.

Also, I chose to make the Starks Roman Catholics bc catholic guilt just _fits_ the Starks and the theme of this story so well.

* * *

Jon Snow arrives on their doorstep one day, much like Harry Potter and Peter Pan and all those famous orphans Sansa was always reading about.

Unlike those orphans, however, Sansa finds there is nothing about Jon Snow that she likes. He doesn't look like he belongs in a book or a story of any sort: he is grim and grey and gaunt and everything that is dull and ordinary.

She sees him first because she's the one who opens the door, excited as she always is when she thinks one of her parents' friends might be coming—which usually means she might get to see the boy she likes, or hear some wonderful stories.

Later, she'll remember the oddness of it all, the stark contrast of the laughter coming from the living room and this unfamiliar boy that looks as if he hasn't laughed a single day in his life.

Even at ten, Sansa can tell this boy is broken.

His voice is raspy and it cracks like Robb's. But unlike Robb's it is quiet and almost dead. "May I come in?"

Sansa holds onto the door. "I don't know you," she answers honestly. "I am not allowed to let strangers in."

By then the laughter in the living room has died and her father is by her side, his hands holding her shoulders like anchors. "Who's there, Sansa?" He asks breathlessly.

Then, she sees.

Jon Snow has her father's hair, his skin, even his eyes.

"You must be Jon," her father whispers in a way that reminds Sansa of all those times she'd sat in the darkness and offered her sins and prayed for forgiveness.

There's a lot of yelling that night—Sansa hears them from her room— but the next morning she finds the boy sitting at their kitchen table, chatting with her brother Robb and her father and even her own mother.

It is then, or perhaps some time later, that her father gathers the entire family in his study to tell them the story of Jon Snow. He's staying here, he says. Robb asks something about their Aunt Lyanna and Bran asks what an orphan is. Sansa remembers someone crying. Her father, perhaps, or maybe her newfound cousin, who, as she learns later, is listening at the other side of the door.

Initially, her mother resents Jon's intrusion upon her home, and so does Sansa.

She asks her father why it is he can't go to his other relatives or to a simple orphanage.

"A long time ago, I had a sister who I loved very much," her father tells her. "Jon is all I have left of her."

And the look in his eyes is so heart-breaking Sansa erases it from her mind and asks no further questions.

Unlike Sansa, her siblings embrace Jon's very existence like they never embraced hers. Amongst them, he looks like another Stark sibling, but Sansa doesn't see him as such.

Still, she soon finds herself excluded from even more things than before. Robb laughs in her face when she asks him to play house with her, and chooses to spends hours with Jon Snow instead. Sansa doesn't understand why she can't go with them to the attic and listen to old records too. She loves music. Robb knows that.

Arya's complete and utter adoration of their cousin doesn't shock Sansa as much as Bran's and Rickon's, her baby brothers, the ones she is always playing with and reading stories to. But, like Arya and Robb, they don't want her either. All everyone seems to want is Jon Snow.

But the worst betrayal of all is that of her father, who gives one of their newborn puppies to him as a gift. The thing is completely white and on the bringe of death, but Jon Snow nurses it back to health and christens it with the stupid name of Ghost.

And all Sansa can think of when she sees her family together by the fireplace is that she's never felt so out of place here, in this room, in this house, with these siblings who have always mocked her and her parents who have always been so blind. She's never questioned anything around her until Jon Snow arrived.

She decides to hate Jon Snow from then on.

The most horrible part of it all is whenever she finds herself alone with him. She senses his dislike, sees it in his eyes every time they bump into each other in the endless corridors of her endless house. Every time it happens, as much as she tries to avoid his eyes, she thinks she can hear him voicing everyone's thoughts—

An idiot, Arya calls her. An airhead, Robb laughs. Dumb, Bran states. Meanie, Rickon babbles. Pretty, her parents say.

What she likes the most about Joffrey is all the nice things he says to her. Kind, beautiful, lady-like, warm, soft, pure, good.

Yet the first time he hits her, she is not surprised. The sting she feels is that of the disillusion she'd secretly been expecting all along.

Somehow, it is Jon who sees the bruises first. He closes the door softly behind him and stays there, not even flinching when Sansa jumps out of her bed—feeling all the while like a child caught in the wrong.

He simply says, "I heard you crying." His voice has changed—it is soothing and smooth now and no longer cracks. "Joffrey Lannister's work, I'm guessing." His eyes linger on her bare shoulders and downwards to her arms, and then they fall on the cream and the makeup that lay scattered on her bed.

Sansa wipes the tears from her eyes with a harsh hand and manages to croak, "Get out."

He stays, unmoving and unmoved.

"When did this start?"

She wants to curse him and tell him to just _leave leave leave_, but her voice has left her body, and all she has in its place are whimpers and tears. Her hands are the worst part, how much they keep shaking, how white they appear, how the ring Joffrey gave her is still on her finger and how much she wants to take it off and throw it in his face.

"Sansa," he says, startling her. To her relief, he doesn't leave his post by her door. "Does anyone know about this?"

She shakes her head no and adds, in her mind, _of course not you idiot are you blind why can't you just leave why are you here what do you even care just leave leave leave._

"I'll get you something for the bruises. You don't want Robb coming back from practice to find _that_'s missing," and he is looking directly at the incriminating cream.

He leaves her with a promise.

He never tells anyone, and neither does she.

Not much later, Joffrey breaks up with her. He's dating a woman now, a real woman with proper tits and a heavenly ass. Her name is Margaery Tyrell and she is beautiful and smart and older and rich, the best he's ever had.

It takes all of Sansa's strength not to laugh in his face—Joffrey taught her even the slightest hint of an unwelcome smile can and will be received with brutality.

But it takes all she has left to avoid spitting in his face when he strokes her cheek and says that she's a stupid girl, always was, always will be, and she should consider herself lucky that he even considered dating her.

That very night she goes to Jon's room for the first time. She's been there before—grudgingly, to call him and Arya or one of the others to dinner—but this time, she's here because she wants to. She waits a beat and then raps at his door.

"Who or what is it?" he calls. "And no, Robb, I'm not jacking off to Ygritte, you ass—"

"It's Sansa."

For a beat she thinks he hasn't heard her, or is pretending not to—

"Come in."

His room is even worse than she remembers, the standard wallpaper covered by posters and pictures and furniture—all hidden, except for one corner, Sansa sees, a secretive corner where somebody's carved a blue heart. Its shy little letters can barely be read, but if you look closely, you can make out the R and the L.

"This was your mother's room, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

He's setting the earphones and the iPod on his—his mother's—bedside table, but appears to disregard the option of leaving the bed or even sitting up properly. Sansa chooses to sit on his—his mother's—only chair. She wonders if any of the things she's seeing—the chair, the bed, the lamps, the rugs—are actually his or if they're only relics left untouched in memory of the ghost-woman who owned them once.

Sitting in this place where Jon must have sat a thousand times before and had the same thoughts she was having, it occurs to her what an awful thing it is to have no one to turn to. She sees the word orphan in her mind's eye and when she turns it over she discovers something new.

He's not looking at her, but Sansa is looking at him. She watches him swallow, watches his eyes, watches his lips move, watches rather than hears the words as they come out of his mouth, "Did he hit you again?"

She is entranced, but the hand on her shoulder breaks the spell. It appears Jon Snow is capable of moving. He might be an orphan of the heroic sort after all.

"No," Sansa says, focusing on her white hands folded in her lap, ready for prayer. "He broke up with me."

"Good."

She half-laughs, half-sobs, "It is, isn't it?"

This time they both look at each other. Sansa takes the opportunity to tell him everything not with words, but with her eyes. She prays he's a good interpreter.

He is. "You don't have to say anything, Sansa."

She starts crying. She cries for a long time, so it takes her even longer to realize his arms are around her and he's stroking her hair and she's burying her face into his chest.

They don't become buddies, not even friends, and certainly not family—they never regarded each other as such, after all—but they do start talking, not like cousins, but like accomplices.

She doesn't know how it happens, the talking. Sansa believes that perhaps secrets, when shared, turn into threads that bind people for life.

And every time they talk Sansa feels the weight of the secret that's holding them close grow less heavy as they both carry it together.

Or so she tells herself at night.

For the first time in her life, Sansa believes she knows what being truly happy is like.

Happiness is when one is content just reading by the window near the fireplace, catching glimpses of the people one loves as they play outside. Happiness is watching Jon fall on the snow and laugh like a boy. Happiness is when he finds her eyes and stops to wave at her and gives her a real smile. Happiness is opening the windowpanes so she can join them at last.

She's taken up reading again. Joffrey often said she should read real books, books about wars and blood and sex, not those stupid little worlds of fancy. When she tells this to Jon, he looks at her fondly and says his father used to love those books and often read them to him before bed.

The way he says it—quietly, as if he doesn't want to be heard—fills Sansa's eyes with tears. She is aware he's never talked about his father since that night.

They always sit very far apart when they talk, but tonight Sansa makes up her mind to join him on the floor. They stay there a while, their legs stretched on the carpet, their shoulders touching, their eyes on the little blue heart his mother engraved on the wall.

"They must have loved you very much," Sansa says. She hears him sniff. She waits patiently, her eyes never leaving that heart.

She used to think her Aunt Lyanna was an ungrateful fool, getting pregnant and leaving her home forever to give birth to some married man's bastard. Now, sitting here with her son as the sole witness of his sorrow, she's certain she must have been the bravest woman in the world.

"Jon, what was your mother like?"

Of course she's familiar with the story, having gathered bits and pieces of it since she was a child. Still, she wants to hear it from his lips.

"She was very beautiful," he begins. Of course Sansa knows this already, but the look in his eyes silences her. "I don't really remember her... Dad often said she was, and—and—well, we didn't keep pictures of her around the house, you know, but your father—he's showed me a couple photos..."

She listens to him, and when he's done, she rests her head on his shoulder and pretends she doesn't know his tears are falling on her hair.

That Sunday they go to mass—Robb and Jon aren't there, they always manage to disappear at the very moment they're about to leave—so it's just her parents and her little siblings. Rickon falls asleep in his mother's arms as usual, and Bran and Arya make faces at each other until their father gives them the very intense, very threatening Stark look that Jon has somehow inherited. After that, all Sansa hears is the priest and her heart as it aches with guilt inside her chest, spelling the name Jon Snow every two beats.

They take to walking together. Sometimes they take Lady and Ghost with them. More often than not, it's just the two of them. They just wander around aimlessly, exchanging stories and ideas and thoughts. He is the first to learn of her secret desire to write books, as she is the first to learn he wants to be a musician like his father.

They go to the cemetery together, not like he does with Robb or Arya—there's no joints or alcohol or scaring of little girls, after all—but like two mourners. When they get to his parents' graves, Sansa holds his hand.

Afterwards, they walk home hand-in-hand, until they hear her father calling for them to come inside. Sansa never knows who is the first to let go of whose hand. When her father opens the door, she is certain all he sees is two cousins with their pets.

"You two have certainly been getting along lately," her mother comments during dinner, her eyes sharp. "Where did you go today?"

Jon coughs and looks ready to answer, but Sansa speaks first. "We went to the library," she lies quickly. "Of course Jon had to wait for me with the dogs, but I really wanted to get this book."

"Sansa," her mother says severely, "boys, even if they're family, do not exist for the sole purpose of carrying your books or your bags or your anythings. And how many times must I tell you—all of you—not to take the dogs to town?"

Every son, daughter, and cousin nod obediently. Sansa plays the part of the pious daughter so well she almost believes it.

"As for you, Jon," her mother goes on, "and Robb," she adds, making the boy jump in his seat, "you two are the eldest. If I ever catch either one of you corrupting my youngest, I'll have your hides." She points an accusatory finger to both of them, until Sansa's father starts chuckling and eventually everyone joins in.

Sansa looks at Jon, expecting to find a smile waiting for her. Her own smile dies when she sees he's staring into his plate and he's frowning at it as if he's done something terrible to it.

The next day he comes home from school with a girl called Ygritte. Sansa dislikes her immediately. She counts on Arya to do the same, but her traitor of a sister is easily won over when it comes to horseriding and sports, which is apparently all Ygritte knows about because she won't shut up about it.

The worst part is how she touches Jon's hair and kisses his cheek and sits on his lap and—no, this is the worst of it all—how he just... lets her. Seeing them together is like staring into one of those twisted, disfiguring mirrors they have at carnivals—insanity and sin come alive to haunt her.

Sansa doesn't say a word, not even when Ygritte asks her how she's doin' with that ridiculous accent of hers. She only pretends to read as she spies them over the book Jon got her for her fourteenth birthday. When Jon finally dares to look at her, she meets his gaze with brave fury.

He looks away.

Sansa throws the book at them when they start making out right in front of her. "Show some respect, Jon Snow," she spits out cruelly, "this isn't even your house."

She begs her priest for forgiveness. Forgive my anger. Forgive my sins. Forgive my lies. Forgive that which I cannot confess. Forgive that, too. Forgive me forgive me forgive me.

Jon stops bringing Ygritte home shortly afterwards. Whether he's still seeing her or not does not concern Sansa.

It all seems to have gone back to the way it was before. When they're together they avoid each other's eyes and the air is awkward and filled with meaningful silence, even if they're surrounded by their whole family—well, especially then.

They come to a mutual, albeit unspoken, agreement, it seems, for every time one of them enters a room, the other is compelled to leave it. Jon even excuses himself from dining with them, and they all pretend not to notice, which makes Sansa even angrier, though she can't say who she is angry with.

She notices that Arya and Bran and Robb spend a lot of time by his door. She even sees her Dad there once, but much like the others, he leaves without being granted entry.

Another day passes without them seeing him and Robb shrugs, "It's Ygritte. He's being an ass, though, I'll give you that."

When a whole week has passed and her mother begins making arrangements for Jon to see a therapist, Sansa excuses herself from the dinner table arguing that she's feeling sick.

She feels even sicker when she tries to open Jon's door.

"Whoever it is, don't bother."

"It's Sansa," she says with all the authority of a Stark and all the grace of a Tully, "and you _will_ bother for me."

She hears his voice so close to the door she knows it is the only thing that's keeping them apart. "Sansa," —and her heartbeat— "I can't," —Jon Sow, Jon Snow— "please."

"Jon, please," she begs with a devotion that is hers alone.

There's a click, and the door opens. For a moment all they do is regard each other.

"Thank you," Sansa says regally as she steps inside. "For Heaven's sake, Jon, you can close the door."

She's forgotten how safe and comfortable this room makes her feel—that is, until Jon Snow slams the door shut. Loudly.

Sansa turns to find herself trapped with a boy who smirks cruelly at her, a boy she does not know. He bows before her, but it is not like it is in her books. He isn't offering her his love, only his mockery.

"As you command, miss Stark. After all, this isn't my house. I wouldn't want to feel welcome or—"

Sansa pushes him with the force of long-witheld rage. He falls on his back but somehow manages to take her with him. She's suddenly reminded of all those times they lay here and talked and cried, and how he took all of that away and brought Ygritte to this place, _their_ place. Before Jon knows what's happening, Sansa is banging her fists against his chest, his ribcage, his stomach, and all the places that were once as sacred as they were forbidden to her.

"Sansa, stop—"

"Why? Am I reminding you of Ygritte? Is it so painful to think of her? Is it so painful to see a girl that looks like her every day? Does it hurt?"

Jon manages to grab her wrists and, though she struggles, he doesn't let go. He only looks at her intently and presses his forehead against hers. Sansa's heart chants in wild beats, Jon Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow.

His skin against hers is the sweetest thing she's ever experienced. It is the most important thing in the world, the only thing in the world, that she wants. One by one, the voices in her head fall silent. She closes her eyes and fights to get closer still.

"Sansa," Jon whispers next to her mouth. "Sansa, stop. Sansa." His voice is quiet, but it still echoes against her lips, "Sansa, Sansa, Sansa."

He lets go of her wrists. She shudders when his mouth brushes hers. He begins with, "I—" and she finishes it with a kiss.

She's not too aware of what she's doing, but she doesn't pay attention to that either. All that matters now is kissing Jon, biting Jon's lower lip, tracing his mouth with the tip of her tongue. She has to kiss his fingers and his hands and his cheeks and she can't ever stop. She only surrenders when his tongue meets hers.

Her hands go to his hair, to his neck, to his jaw. She traces lines and circles that go from his shoulders and all the way down his back. He moans and she smiles. She wants to feel him, so she does, pressing herself against him, pressing as close and as steady as she can.

Sansa was always repulsed whenever Joffrey rubbed his erection against her, but when she feels Jon's, something in her belly stirs and travels down until it's stirred all of her. She's read of sex many times, of course, she's swooned at her books' colorful attempts at conveying want and lust and desire, but she knows now that they were all wrong. Want, lust, and desire are not things that can be put into words. They can only be felt and experienced—in a desperate kiss, in groans and whimpers, in touching and being touched, in the agony of release, and most especially in all of the above.

When they're finished, Jon lays his head between Sansa's breasts, where she's sure he can hear her heart's happy tune. He presses a soft kiss on her neck.

"I love you," someone says.

It doesn't matter who it is. What matters is they're both home, and they're forgiven.


End file.
